Chance Encounter
by notsing
Summary: Pre-series.  This one is a bit off-beat, so if everyone hates it I understand. I don't own Numb3rs.


Chance Encounter

Dear Cathy,

Hi! How are you and yours? Doing well, I hope. We're all good here, except Rick is fighting off a cold, poor lamb. I just got back from doing my familial duty and taking care of Mom while she recovered from her surgery. That is, if taking care of her means not killing her while she bitched at me and told me what an awful daughter I am.

Hey! She's still breathing! I should be nominated for sainthood for that! As soon as the doctor said she could manage on her own, I COULD NOT get out of there fast enough! As a result, guess who got caught in those floods that swept through? (I'm sure you heard about them, they've been on all the news.)

Rick, poor dear, was going frantic, but I didn't realize how dangerous it was at first. I was just driving along in the pouring rain, thinking, 'Man! It's really coming down!' when I got pulled over by a cop. I was confused, because I knew I hadn't been speeding, but the cop was real nice and told me the road was closed because a bridge was flooded. Well, I was in the middle of the boonies, with nowhere to go, but the nice policeman told me there was a state post a few miles away, and suggested I follow him there to wait out the worst of the weather.

It turned out not to be too bad, there was a breakroom with comfortable chairs and the coffee was drinkable (just). At first, I was the only civilian there, but then two other refugees from the storm came in (they weren't together though, evidently they just followed the same cop back to the station).

They were both men, and the first one reminded me of Chad a little. He was about the same age as your husband, and the same general build. The second one was about fifteen years younger than us, and oh my, was he CUTE. You remember when we were freshmen in high school, and there was that senior boy, Nick somebody, that we called Mr. Hot Stuff? We used to haunt senior hall to get glimpses of him. Hell, we even kept tallies on how many times we saw him (bonus points if you caught a glimpse of chest hair!)

Well, as you've probably guessed, the second guy reminded me of Mr. Hot Stuff. If I was about fifteen years younger, and not happily married, I would have considered dragging him off to some secluded corner. As it was, I just drooled over him. Hey! If I can be understanding about Rick nearly breaking his neck every time he sees a blond with big boobs (and how he ended up with a brunette with no boobs I'll never know), Rick can just deal with me panting over the occasional cute guy.

Anyway, the three of us were stuck there for a while, so I introduced myself. The kind-of-looks-like-Chad guy introduced himself as Jim Henderson, and cutie-pie said he was Don Eppes.

"Eppes?" asked Jim, "any relation to THE Eppes?"

Well, I was curious, because I've never heard of any one named Eppes, and Hot Stuff Don looked cautious.

"I don't think so," he replied. "Who is he?"

Henderson looked gloomy. "Beats me. Some mathematician. I was sitting in the doctor's office last week and read some article about this Eppes guy while I was waiting. He's come up with something called the Eppes Contingent."

Now what in the world cutie-pie Don found so funny about that, I'll never know, but you should have seen that SMILE! Seriously Cathy, I wish you would have been there. You could have joined me in a puddle on the floor. I am talking M-E-L-T!

Anyway Hot Stuff Don assured Jim, "I've never heard of the Eppes Contingent. So I'll have to say no relation."

I had to ask, "What is it, anyway?"

"Some math formula. At least, that's what the article said. It didn't look like any math formula I recognized. I studied that thing for five minutes and couldn't make heads or tails of it."

"I'm sure I couldn't have either, " said Mr. Hot Stuff. "Math is definitely NOT my thing."

"Yeah," said Henderson, "I hear you. That night, I had a nightmare that I was back in high school geometry."

"You poor thing!" I sympathized. "It's bad enough to have to suffer through high school math once, without dreaming about it!"

"Yeah!" said Henderson, "My wife said I was screaming pi r squared!"

"You remembered a math formula, at least," I marveled. "That's more than I could do."

"Yeah," replied Henderson. "But I have no idea what the formula is for, I can't remember what number pi stands for, and I don't know what r stands for, so just think how useful it is for me to remember that!"

We all three laughed, and cutie-pie Don said, "I've always found math to be useless."

"Right," I said. "I mean, I use the basics, like adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing, but that's all. And come to think of it, I don't even do the basics. I have a handy-dandy calculator that does all that for me."

"Exactly!" said Jim. "I use the basics too, but I learned all that in grade school! I've never used any of the math I learned in high school!"

"Hypotenuse of a triangle," added cutie-Don. "I have never once needed to figure out the hypotenuse of a triangle in the real world."

"Really! What does math have to do with the real world?" I agreed. "And with calculators, who even needs to learn math anymore?"

"Well," joined in Henderson, "I suppose we would still need accountants. But what else do you learn math for, except to be an accountant?"

Hot Stuff Don looked positively gleeful, "Right! Let's get rid of all math except for accounting."

"Oh my God!" I said, "can you imagine? No algebra, no calculus. . ."

"High school would be a walk in the park!" interrupted dreamy Don. "I like it!"

"But what would we do with the mathematicians?" asked Jim.

"Are they really necessary?" countered Hottie Don.

"I could live without them," I joined in. "Like Kendall, my geometry teacher. He could easily be replaced with a sadist. He was a sadist! His class was pure torture!"

"All mathematicians are sadists." said gorgeous Don.

"Well, I have to agree," said Henderson. "I mean, obviously, I still have math nightmares! I'm terrified of mathematicians!"

Well Cathy, it was at that point I heard Hot Stuff Don mutter, "One's always been the bane of my life," which was such an odd, archaic thing to say, that I lost track of the conversation for a while. And before you whine that you have no idea what bane means, I'll tell you that it's an obsolete word for poison. So what the cutie-pie was saying was that a mathematician had poisoned his life! Now you have to admit, that was a strange thing to say! I was dying to ask him what he meant, but of course I couldn't. Besides the fact that I didn't really know him, he hadn't really meant for anyone to overhear him.

In any case, it was shortly after that the cops said it was safe to leave, and I got home without any more trouble. But I thought this was kind of a fun story to tell you, since you suffered through Kendall's class with me!

Well, take care, and write when you get a chance! Love you! Gina

_I feel the need to point out that this isn't just a chance encounter for my fictional letter writer, but also for Don. Sometimes, when we're talking to strangers we know we'll never see again, buried resentments can surface. After all, the normal filters most of us automatically have when dealing with people we're close to are gone._


End file.
